By Daniel Flynn
ACCRA (Reuters) - Proposed trade deals between Europe anddozens of its former colonies would expose poor nations tocheap industrial imports and slash their customs revenues,British-based charity Oxfam said on Monday.
In a report entitled "Partnership or Power Play?", Oxfamcalled on the 35 countries from the Africa, Caribbean andPacific (ACP) group that had initialled draft deals with theEuropean Union last year to renegotiate them.
The EU wants these deals to be formally signed by July 2008and is pressing all 76 ACP states to complete negotiations onEconomic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) by 2009. It argues thedeals will promote trade and encourage foreign investment.
But Oxfam said the bilateral deals, designed to cover theexpiry of preferential tariffs for Europe's former coloniesunder World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules at the end of lastyear, would undermine development and hobble the creation oftrade blocs in some of the world's poorest regions.
Africa has the world's lowest ratio of regional trade --less than 7 percent of its exports -- and this has long beenconsidered a major obstacle to its development.
"In a fair deal, Europe would fully open its markets to allexports without demanding reciprocation," said Mouhamet LamineNdiaye, Oxfam's Pan-Africa head of Economic Justice.
"There is a lot of potential to make a really positivedifference to poor countries' economic prospects, and there isstill time to do it."
The European Union has said that WTO rules on reciprocitymean that developing countries must open their own markets tobenefit from freer access to European ones.
Oxfam said the EU could broaden its trade incentive system,the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), to allow poorcountries to retain special benefits.
JOBS AT RISK
Agreeing fair trade deals is vital to many poor nations andhundreds of thousands of jobs could be at risk, Oxfam said. Itsaid that while ACP goods account for only 2 percent ofEurope's imports, they represented a quarter of those country'sexports.
The draft deals grant only limited scope for developingcountries to retain any tariff protection, which they mostlyused to defend their economies from subsidised Europeanagricultural exports, exposing their fledgling manufacturingsectors, Oxfam said.
The report cited the example of Senegal, which lost onethird of its manufacturing jobs after liberalising the sector.
"The cost will be enormous: annual losses from tariff cutsof $360 million for Africa alone," said Ndiaye.
Only a very few countries had benefited from the fulltransition period of 25 years for removing tariffs on certainproducts, the charity said.
Timetables were radically different depending on acountry's negotiating prowess: Ivory Coast would have tocompletely remove tariffs on 60 percent of European imports twoyears before Kenya even starts liberalisation, Oxfam said.
The charity also said that strict intellectual propertyrules by the European Union would deepen the digital divide andchallenge traditional farming methods, including seed saving.
This was only offset by weak EU commitments to help poorcountries access new technology, it said.
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say onthe top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/ )
(Editing by Pascal Fletcher)